


Crit

by FritoBi



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Fluffy, High School AU, Human AU, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:21:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28968960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FritoBi/pseuds/FritoBi
Summary: Alphys desperately wants to have the perfect date to her school's dance despite her terrible habit of scaring girls off. When a new girl named Undyne arrives at her school, she's instantly smitten...and terrified. Realizing this may be her last shot to snag a date, Alphys does what she can to correct her past dating errors using her best (and most popular) friend Mettaton's guidance and a little support from the Internet. Somehow everything still manages to run amok.
Relationships: Alphys & Undyne (Undertale), Alphys/Undyne (Undertale)
Kudos: 4





	Crit

Alphys could say with complete certainty that she sucked at girls. The discovery was miserable but nearly irrefutable. It was hard to deny the truth of the matter when all the data just kept piling up. She felt like she was suffocating under the weight of every personal case study she conducted.

Alphys liked to think of herself as a young scientist. She was good at noticing patterns, and this was certainly another pattern playing out. The anxious high schooler cradled her smartphone with the trepidation of an adventurer fiddling with a treasure chest, wary of the possibility of a mimic unfurling and snapping its fangs around their hand. This was far from the first time she’d been stuck somewhere sitting. Waiting. She felt like her determination had been slurped straight from her body through one of those bendy straws.

She sucked at talking to girls. She sucked at asking girls out, reading signals and taking hints. She sucked at gracefully backing out. And she really, really sucked at dropping it.

She sucked really, really, really hard at dropping it. She felt her fingers act against her best judgement, guided by the fear and the desperation clawing up her throat.

hey is something up with ur phone :3 {8:15 pm}

Tsu i’m sore for bugging you but do u still want to watch some anime?? {8:19 pm}

ok i’m sorry for being a pest :( {8:21 pm}  
did i do something wrong {8:30 pm}

QUIT TEXTING ME YOU STALKER {8:40 PM}

Alphys fell back onto her bed, causing her mop of tightly curled blonde hair to swamp her like a sea monster ensnared in seaweed. She was toast. Burnt, burnt sapphic toast. She’d fucked up again. The hesitant part of her knew that this behavior needed to stop. That was how Alphys’ therapist liked to describe her courting tendencies now: behaviors. Even Metaton kept warning her that she was going to screw herself over before the Snowflake Ball, which was outside of Metaton’s usual inclinations; they adored seeing people screw themselves over.

❤

“You’re running out of girls to chase off, pumpkin,” Metaton had told her on the way to journalism class just two weeks ago. Alphys had been accompanying them to their next class, having offered to help their teacher with a computer issue. Ms. Toriel, the motherly journalism teach that had managed to win over all the queer kids, was always good for a hall pass. 

The IT guys at Underland High were unforgivably slow, and Ms. Toriel was woefully incompetent with technology. Alphys, on the other hand, was nearly as handy as the school’s IT employees. Plus Alphys could be bribed to get the work done with the latest edition of some anime magazine or a carby snack, which could easily be procured at the bookstore ten minutes from campus. While it cost more money to fork out periodicals to Alphys, Ms. Toriel was more than happy to pay it. The saved time and frustration ultimately cut back on the number of grey hairs that the 40-something teacher had to dye. Recruiting Alphys was win-win for both of them.

Before Alphys could get to work, Ms. Toriel had to read the class announcements. Alphys plopped down next to Metaton on the comfy reading couch while she waited.

Metaton had offered Alphys a salt and vinegar chip then, the closest thing to touchy feely comfort they had in their social repertoire. “This school isn’t exactly large, and I’m fairly sure you’ve already worked yourself through the entire bisexual lady population. At least that I’m aware of anyway! I mean, you know I know everyone, but I especially know everyone that’s gay. You’re building a reputation, and it’s not exactly the kind of popularity you should be chasing.” The warning had been like a gut punch; Ms. Toriel’s easy computer issue nearly took Alphys the whole class. The baffled teacher had even offered her a nurse’s pass and a cup of tea out of concern.

Metaton was a good friend in their own way. They knew how badly Alphys wanted a dream prom, complete with the perfect dress, the perfect dinner, a perfect slow dance, perfect friends, and an even more perfect date. They also had their thumb on the pulse of the romances occurring at Underland High. Heeding their advice was probably the best course of action moving forward.

❤  
Of course, heeding Metaton’s advice was hard, even if it had been only six days since the warning. It felt agonizing to just leave the stalker text.

Alphys shoved the phone into a pile of laundry sitting on the edge of the bed, inconveniently out of reach if she was lounging on her usual spot on the bed. She rolled off the bed and tip-toed out of her messy room and toward the kitchen. Maybe a Mew Mew: Kissy Cutie binge could serve as a satisfying deterrent. Luckily her parents were out on one of their biweekly dates, which meant that Alphys could scavenge to her heart’s content without having to deal with her mother complaining about her “concerning weight gain”. 

Alphys wondered about what went wrong with Tsu as she gathered miniature bags of MnMs and a big bag of generic bright orange cheese curls, plus a Hot & Spicy Shrimp Cup Noodles, of course. The first date had felt really, really right. Tsu had listened in complete silence when Alphys had described the time travel arc of Magical Chorus Bell Angel. Clearly she’d been so interested she couldn’t find her words, content to just listen to Alphys’ insights. Alphys had even picked a vegan coffee shop, having heard that Tsu was a vegetarian. When Alphys ordered a meal, Tsu had ordered a tidy little raspberry jam cookie, meaning that she had to be comfortable in Alphys’ presence. Who ordered dessert first or any food items out of order unless they felt completely comfortable with their dining mate? That was just weird. 

Alphys padded back to her room, carefully balancing the hot noodles, snacks, and sodas. She settled into her bed and surrounded herself with the snacks, nesting in the tasty goodness. One of her favorite episodes of Mew Mew: Kissy Cutie was fired up. She felt her spirits rising, only to be crushed as soon as Alphys saw an ad. Her mother had let the Crunchyroll subscription lapse again. 

Fucking ads. How was a person not supposed to distract themselves with their phone during the agonizing breaks? Alphys chomped down on a chip with excessive force as an ad for a boring sports anime repeated its intro again. Annoying. She heard her phone buzz, struggling against the massive pile of laundry.

Another buzz accompanied the start of yet another repeat of the sports anime ad. Alphys worried her lip, feeling her barely there bits of self-control flake away with each generic shonen sporty cutie that graced her screen, looking intensely at each other and tossing sports balls around. She just needed to get to the magical girls! 

Then the ad repeated again, chirping about a “CHILDHOOD RIVALRY SINCE LITTLE LEAGUE”. Alphys could’t take the boredom; she knocked the chips away and retrieved her phone. How was she supposed to force herself to space out her communication to her crush and ideal prom date with ads ruining her anime viewing experience?

hey have you seen sporty baseball catholic school boys: action!!! {9:05 pm}

Radio silence. 

Well, that was fair, Alphys thought. Sporty Baseball Catholic School Boys: Action!!! sucked. 

The next day, Mettaton informed Alphys that Tsu had blocked her shortly after the stalker text that weekend. The girls in the morning news video production class had been shooting the shit about it while rendering their hard-hitting story about Muffy’s at-home bakery that morning; everyone wanted to know the secret recipe, because her pastries were certifiably off the chain. 

(No way in hell Muffy was revealing that she liked to cook with insects, though she’d take the free publicity.)

Having been blocked by another girl, Alphys was certain that being a 17-year-old lesbian certifiably sucked.  


❤  


A few towns over, one of Alphys’ soon-to-be peers was having some concerns of her own. Her concerns primarily consisted of the burning house in front of her, as well as the ramifications that she hadn’t bothered to consider in that fateful moment when she decided to turn her charred chicken mac n cheese into burnt chicken mac and cheese. She’d Googled the most common ways to start house fires on her phone in the middle of prepping yet another disappointing dinner and went with what seemed the most practical in that moment. 58% of house fires begin on the stove according to amybsells.com. Amy was right about the effectiveness of going with the burner in the kitchen course! Leaving paper and bits of cardboard on the fully turnt up stovetop did the trick; the burning was going swimmingly. 

Well, kind of swimmingly. Undyne felt smothered beneath her t-shirt, which stuck to her like goopy rubber cement. She figured that she probably should have put on some deodorant beforehand; she was rank from all the sweat. Things were escalating far faster than Undyne had anticipated. The laundry room ceiling was just engulfed in heat. Next to her, her German Shepard Charizard whined and tried to tug away from the sight.

Undyne’s second concern had to do with the whole house-not-entirely-burning-to-rubble thing. She had fully intended to wreck every last one of her stepfather Jerry’s precious doodads and stupid overpriced electronics he was so proud of; she hadn’t intended to wreck her shit too. 

‘Maybe this choice wasn’t my best…’ Undyne considered for a moment. ‘NAH. THIS RULES. FUCK YOU, JERRY.’

Even if the fire burning down her house situation did rule, fires were notorious for straying from plans and just doing their own thing. She respected that, but it could be pretty inconvenient.

Then there was the issue of calling 911. Waterfall was truly a town-town, unlike Hotland. Undyne’s closest neighbor was miles out. There were cows, pastures, and hay. That too was a cause for concern; if the fire caught the ground, the whole area would be up in flames. Again, very fucking cool, but also very at risk of causing Undyne grave harm with a very small likelihood of the harm gifting her with a dope battle scar and minimal functional injuries. She’d look like shit in a casket. Also, she had Charizard to think about. Charizard didn’t deserve to get chara-charred just because Undyne had become fed up and lost her temper.

Despite the settlement’s name, there were no waterfalls or quick sources of water near or around Waterfall, outside of the occasional fishing pond. Udyne hated it; swimming was the one thing that could lull her into a state of peace, and she’d not been able to do much of it since moving to this shithole hick town. Waterfall’s high school could barely scrape together a football team, let alone a swim team. 

Undyne’s mother used to insist that Undyne was so at home in the water, that she might as well have been a mermaid. That was before Undyne’s mom willingly wrapped herself around Undyne’s stepdad’s finger, back when she actually gave her daughter some modicum of attention. Undyne had insisted she’d much rather be a piranha back then, which would always make her mom smile. It was still a true sentiment, though her mother wasn’t around frequently enough to share much of a smile anymore. 

Undyne glanced at the cracked smartphone in her hand, knowing that her window of opportunity was limited. Maybe some of the house could be salvaged if she made an emergency call now. Maybe she’d be able to find her mother’s last heartstring dedicated to her if there was some fragment of the home left, before her wife-beating POS stepfather warped all of their family life into a chaotic storm, with nothing feeling right or stable or even pleasantly chaotic. The only thing sure was that Jerry was at the center of all of the commotion. Undyne loathed the fucker. 

Undyne’s mom and stepfather had left to go to Olive Garden just earlier in Hotland, the nearest city 35 minutes away. Taking Undyne’s mother out to eat at a place of his choice was her stepfather’s new favorite way to say ‘I’m sorry’ when he broke her mom’s stuff or knocked her about with his fists. Nothing said repentance like eggplant parm and stale breadsticks. He’d broken Undyne’s mother’s sewing machine earlier, all in response to Undyne’s mom asking if he had put the Tupperware away in the correct spot. 

He hadn’t. 

Undyne wanted him to feel what it was like to have someone else break you and your things and screw you over, if only once. As another piece of the roof collapsed, she considered that maybe others would consider her response to be overboard. No, she knew they would. They just didn’t get it. Sometimes things were big enough to warrant a reaction. The world would make a lot more sense if people were just real about their feelings. 

Undyne walked toward the driveway gate, nearing the dusty road that would take her down to the Napsters. It probably wouldn’t take more than an hour or so to reach them. She dialed 911, simultaneously feeling regret and relief.

Undyne’s stepfather was a volunteer firefighter in the area. He’d be furious, ashamed. Undyne was certain he’d want her or her mother to pay, especially because his peers would certainly have something to say about it. He’d warned Undyne she was nearing the end of his patience, whatever that meant. Somehow he was still pissed about the bottlerocket incident. That was like three weeks ago.

Undyne swung open the driveway gate, sharing details with the operator calmly as she stopped at the start of the dirt road to consider her situation. She’d be damned if she called, damned if she didn’t. Any choice in this situation elicited regrets, just for different reasons. No point in making a fuss about it. 

Maybe the house would make a statement, stir things up. Get her parents to consider some changes. Undyne hoped so anyway. 

Charizard howled as a beat-up old truck approached them. Undyne eagerly waved. There were only so many folks that could be.

“Oh my God,” Blook muttered at a slightly higher volume than his usual tepid, tiny whisper of a voice offered.

“Dude, yeah,” Undyne agreed.


End file.
